


Dreaming About Doughnuts

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-28
Updated: 2008-07-28
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by Angelan</p><p>Caroline wakes up drunk in the back of a van.  She is not best pleased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming About Doughnuts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Janet Carter

 

 

Caroline

I feel sick and I want to kill Norah. I don't know why yet, but it isn't an unusual feeling. Nothing I haven't felt half a million times before when she's hauled me out of this situation or that because it doesn't meet the Norah Silverberg Gold Standard of Clean and Successful Living. Fuck her. The only life she knows how to run is mine. Hers is a fucking mess.

I cast my mind back as far into the evening as it will reach, and it isn't far. Just a mush of dancing, and music, and Norah being pissy because she knows I know she just messed up her existence and even if she doesn't know it completely yet she knows it _somewhere_ , and she's going to figure it out eventually. There's a mattress or a pile of fucking mail sacks or something else just as uncomfortable underneath me, and I wonder for a second if I'm here with some guy, and Norah finally let me get some without interfering, but then I remember I'm pissed at her, and then I remember Randy, and then I remember why. 

_God_. My fucking parents don't care what I do with my time, her parents have never had a problem, so why does she have to get all after school special on me whenever I want to get some entertainment? 

_"Because I don't want to spend New Year's watching you get your stomach pumped again."_

I don't remember asking for memory-Norah to look at me with that holier-than-thou expression, but my recollection is note perfect and I want to hit her.

The stomach pumping, that was when? I can't remember, but I do remember it was somewhere towards the end of the Tal and Norah's series of live action essays entitled _'So You've Decided You Hate Yourself! How to choose the partner that's worst for you!'_ I'd been doing her a favour, really, getting her out of a party Tal was going to, even if it was by ending up in the ER. Whatever. Ungrateful bitch only hooked up with him again anyway.

I realise after a moment that I can hear talking, and I'm in a van, and wasn't there a car, and ugly shoes, somewhere? Maybe that was a dream.

T **h** om

We are screw-diddled. Not literally, obviously. I mean, we were having a Moment and everything, back there at the rest stop, but not that much of a moment. We are in serious problem town, because we made a deal to get Nick out of his personal level of Hades and our end of the bargain is mumbling in her sleep in the back of our van, and not in Englewood Cliffs like she's supposed to be.

In the end, we don't have much of a choice - the directions Norah wrote on my hand are compromised (this is not my fault, nor am I inclined to blame Scott. It was a _moment_ , that's all). I decide to call Nick, and hope that I'm not interrupting a moment of his own.

Scot heads in to the 7-Eleven; the drunken donut ramblings have gotten to us both, and we're starving. I call. And I call. And I call. Nick does not answer. As a good friend and bandmate, I should be glad that the night is working out for him, but I'm mostly just concerned that I'm going to be in this van with this drunk girl for the rest of my life, and we'll have to live on stuff you can buy at a seven eleven, and eventually we'll just mutate into some new species that specialises in actually liking cardboard sandwiches and coffee that has been there for seventeen years. Luckily for the integrity of the human race, the next time I call, I am answered. It's Norah, which is good, because she's the one who knows where we're going. 

Or possibly not. I realise part way through the conversation that neither of us knows where the other one thinks the other is describing. I try to explain where we went after the rest stop, but I had been more interested in watching the headlights of the other cars illuminate Scot's face in new and interesting ways. Norah sighs in frustration, but she doesn't sound as annoyed as the guy who takes the phone. He is good at directions. Stunningly good. If there is some kind of global direction giving contest (and I see no reason why there wouldn't be), this guy would be banned from competing, since he obviously has some kind of supernatural gift. I scramble in the glove compartment for a pen that works and write it all down.

When I talk to Norah, she sounds happy, and then she sounds angry, and then she hangs up. 

Caroline

I suppose I must have had another dream, between then and now, because now the van is at a some store and all I can think about is doughnuts. The fluorescent sign or the store lights are lighting up the van, and I can see all this band crap piled up around me.

Some guy in the passenger seat (and I know now I'm not with him, even if I didn't remember Norah putting the Norah-veto on my sex life because even when I'm wasted I have a gaydar that functions okay most of the time) is looking all confused into his cellphone, and when the guy driving reappears from the Seven-Eleven he looks concerned.

"Did you talk to him?"

Passenger Seat shakes his head. "Norah got us directions." He hands over a piece of paper, and comprehension dawns immediately on Driver Boy's face. 

"We're here. Oh, that's easy then. She should have written that in the first place." He leans over and kisses Passenger Seat boy on the forehead (I am never wrong), and continues,

"See. I told you we'd find it. You worry too much." He grins, and starts up the van. We back out of the glow of the 7-Eleven, and I sit up and can't see anything in the dark.

"Hey, Drunk Friend is awake!" Passenger Seat looks in at me from the front seat. "Want a doughnut?"

I will hate Norah forever (until I get over it) for trying to be my mother tonight, but at least she threw me in a van with someone psychic and helpful.

I ask where Miss Uptight USA is through a mouthful of sugar and a haze of alcohol, but the message gets through.

"She's out with our friend Nick. You remember Nick? With the Yugo?"

It takes a few moments but I do. I do remember Nick, and his bad shoes, and his bad outfit, and his Yugo, and even, vaguely, his band on stage while I was shaking my ass at Ronald. Or was it Randy? Or Roger? Whoever. Hey. Norah is on a date. Norah. Is on a date! With someone who isn't Tal! Perhaps if she gets properly laid Lady Frosty Twat will leave me alone.

I do not realise I have said this aloud, but Passenger Seat frowns at me. After a while he breaks the silence.

"She's only looking out for you, you know? I mean, Nick would kill us if he knew we bribed Norah to take him out, but we still had to do it." 

"You know, like a band aid." Driver Boy chips in. "His ex, Tris, she's just been festering, and he wouldn't get out there, so..."

"...so we nudged things along." Passenger Seat concludes, but I am not listening. After a few moments I put two and two together, that Nick is _Nick_ , and that Norah is out with Nick, and that _Norah_ is out with _Nick_ , and I start laughing.

Tris is an incredibly useful person, at least when the bitch isn't there. I hope Norah has a fantastic time. I hope she forgets Tal even exists.

In fact, by the time I make it to Norah's place, I have almost forgiven her.

 


End file.
